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From the Phrenological Journal, No. XXXV. (Edinburgh.) 



ON THE AMERICAN SCHEME OF ESTABLISHING COLONIES 
OF FREE NEGRO EMIGRANTS ON THE COAST OFIFRICA, 
AS EXEMPLIFIED IN LIBERIA. 



Xt is a direct consequence of the ignorance which prevails in 
society of sound practical principles of human nature and its 
relations, that, in public affairs, controversy takes the place of 
deliberation, decision, and action. Till such principles shall be 
adopted and acknowledfred as standards, the schemes and doings 
of man must, from their first conception to their last consequen- 
ces, be an inextricable mass of disputation, a chaos of conflicting 
impulses, feelings, and prejudices. The hus'iness of the most 
enlightened legislature is debate ; and parties marshal themselvef 
for combat, each in its own impregnable position, from no two of* 
which do social and national affairs present an aspect approach- 
ing to similarity. In Mr Combe's work on " the Constitution 
of Man, considered in relation to external objects,"" which offers 
the practical philosophy for human guidance which is so lamen- 
tably wanted, but which is making its way to an assured preva- 
lence, there is a passage strongly impressed on our mind. " We 
require only," says Mr Combe, " to attend to the scenes daily 
presenting themselves in societj*, to obtain irresistible demonstra- 
tion of the consequences resulting from the want of a true theory 
of human nature and its relations. Every preceptor in schools,', 
every professor in colleges, every author, editor, and pamphleteer, 
every member of parhament, councillor, and judge, has 9 set of 
notions of his own, which, in his mind, hold the place of si system 
of the philosophy of man ; and although he may not h6^ve me- 
thodized his ideas, or even acknowledged them to himself ?.% ,1 
theory, yet they constitute a standard to him, by which he prac- 
tically judges of all questions in morals, politics, and religion ; 
he advocates whatever views coincide with them, and condemns 
all that differ from them, with as unhesitating dogmatism as the 
most pertinacious theorist on earth. Each also despises the 
notions of his fellows, in so far as they differ from his own. In 
short, the human faculties too generally operate as instincts, ex- 
hibiting all the confliction and uncertainty of mere feeUng, un- 



/ 






LTBERIAN CONTKOVEKSV 



enlightened by perception of tlicir own nature ami objects. 
Hcnct' public measures in general, whether relating to educa- 
tion, religion, trade, manufactures, the jwor, criminal law, or 
to any other of the dearest interests of society, instead of being- 
treated as one general system of economy, and adjusted each on 
scientific principles in harmony with all the rest, are supported 
or opposed on narrow and empyrical grounds, and often call 
forth displays of ignorance, prejudice, selfishness, intolerance, 
and bigotry, that greatly obstruct the progress of improvement. 
Indeed, unanimity, even among sensible and virtuous men, will 
be impossible, so long as no standard of mental philosophy is 
admitted to guide individual feelings and perceptions. But the 
state of things now described could not exist, if education em- 
braced a true system of human natiu-e and its relations. If 
Phrenology be true, it will, when matured, supply the deficien- 
cies now pointed out." 

Broad as the satire is, that the affairs of society are as yet a 
ceaseless controversy, we are sometimes apt, for a moment, to 
forget this inconvenient fact, to expect exceptions, and too 
rashly to count upon unanimity in what appear, to us at least, 
very self-evident propositions for social benefit. We con- 
fess we did commit this oversight with regard to the settle- 
.ment of Liberia. If ever there was a human act which seemed 

('to satisfy all our feelings and faculties, it might have been ex- 
pected to be the first projection and effective realization of that 
admirable scheme, whose very essence appeared to us to be bro- 
therly love and peace. In a former number,* we adduced Li- 
\beria as an example, unique on the face of the earth, of a com- 
^nunity based on peace and Christian good-will ; and while we 
\hnsuspectingly indulged in a luxurious contemplation of some- 
thing like a realization, in our own day, of the paramount truth 
which Phrenology and Christianity have both made plain, that 
the Creator has connected happiness, social as well as individual, 
with the supremacy of the moral sentiments and intellect over 
'.'he animal propensities, in the mind of man, w^e did not even 
glance at the American Association, to which is due the merit 
of the beautiful experiment, nor dreamed that any friend of 
jufticp and mercy could have found a fault in the motives or 
vhc acts of that society upon which to hang a censure. We had 
returned with fresh pleasure to the subject of Liberia,-f- when 
investigating the subject of the Negro's capacity for freedom 
and free labour, and it was after our observations were in types, 
that we heard that Liberia — yes, even Liberia — was a controver- 
sy ! that against the American colonizationists, there had risen up 
certain clamorous and even abusive opponents, who imputed to 

* Vol. vii. p. 531. t Vol. viii. p. fi7 



I.IBERIAN CONTROVERSY. 3 

"^ them sinister designs, hypocritical professions, mischievous inten- 
^'- tions, cowardly fears, oppression, cruelty, treachery, and infide- 
<- i lity ! In our then total want of information on the grounds of 
^^ these astounding accusations, suspecting, from the incredible ag- 
<ogravation of the imputations, that feeling more than intellect was 
operating, and judging of the American Society by its fruits, we 
could not believe that so fair a child as Liberia could have such 
a parentage ; and we published our continued approbation, re- 
solving to presume favourably of the Society till irresistible evi- 
dence should constrain us to believe the monstrous charges pre- 
ferred against it. 

We have now seen the articles of impeachment, and perused 
what is called their evidence; and our original surprise at the 
possibility of accusations at all, is fully equalled by our amaze- 
ment that, by persons educated above the pitch of a village 
school, such abject futility, such unqualified drivelling, could 
have been actually printed and published. 

We are struck with the important fact, that the writers against 
the Liberian scheme, and their followers, are all, as far as we 
know, what are termed Immed'iatists, in the slavery abolition 
question ; — the '■^ ruat caelum'''' philanthropists, who prefer jus- 
tice with ruin, to justice without it ; who, in America, are ren- 
dering more difficult and more distant the slave's complete de- 
liverance, by embarrassing the legislatures in their views of its 
safety and certainty ; and in England, are fortunately disre- 
garded by a government that has resolved on measures at once 
more wise, and more efficiently philanthropic. The outcry 
against the Colonization Society originated in America, and has 
been echoed on this side of the water, with a disregard of fact, 
a want of fairness, an absence of logic, and a confusion of 
thought, in every way worthy of the class of minds which fail to 
see, in the sudden discharge of 800,000 Negroes in the British 
West Indies, and two millions in the United States, dislocation of 
the frame of society in those countries, and ruin and misery to 
the very objects of their misplaced benevolence. 

The managers of the impeachment are, a Mr Charles Stuart, 
the author of a pamphlet published at Liverpool, and a Mr 
Lloyd Garrison, a pamphleteer in America ; and although the 
antislavery periodicals, the Reporter and Record, have, with 
little credit to their discernment, joined in the clamour, they 
have pinned their faith to Messrs Stuart and Garrison, and 
produced nothing beyond extracts from their pamphlets ; while 
a Mr James Cropper, of Liverpool, writes a letter to Mr 
Clarkson, in which, after several sweeping and unsupported 
averments, abusive epithets, and much matter, of no applica- 
tion to the subject, he concludes with recommending Mr Stu- 
art''s pamphlet, to which his letter is printed as a sort of pre- 



4 1, 1 n K 11 1 A N C ON I 110 V K n S V. 

face. This pamphlet is called " Prejudice Vincible, or the 
Practicability of conquering Prejudice by better means than by 
Slavery and Exile, in relation to the American Colonization 
Society." We have read it with all the attention and impartia- 
lity in our power, and have been unable to form any other opi- 
nion of it than this, — that, while it manifests a marked spirit of 
special-pleading and unfairness, it fails to substantiate its aver- 
ments in point of fact, and not less to establish their relevancy 
to warrant the inferences drawn from them. In other words, it 
fails to prove the charges against the Society, and if it had suc- 
ceeded, it would have left untouched the absolute good of the 
colony of Liberia. 

The author quotes the two fundamental articles of the Socie- 
ty"'s constitution fairly enough. 

" 1*/, The Society shall be called the American Society for 
colonizing the Free People of Colour of the United States. 

" 9.(1, The object to which its attention is to be exclusively 
directed, is to promote and execute a plan for colonizing (with 
their consent) ^hefrec people of colour residing in our country, 
to Africa, or such other place as Congress shall deem most ex- 
pedient." We regret the alternative as to place, for it tends to 
weaken the grand argument for the scheme, that it will give a 
beginning to the civilization of Africa. De fixcto, however, Af- 
rica has been chosen, and the reservation, we have reason to 
think, was a mere deference to Congress, as matter of form. 

Mr Stuart, unwilling, it would appear, to trust himself with 
a moment's charitable reflection on these articles, at once puts 
the worst construction upon them. " The broad facts of the 
case," he says, " are these : The whole population of the United 
States is about 13,000,000. Out of this, upwards of 2,000,000 
are held in a most degrading and brutal state of personal sla- 
very, under laws worse than even those of the wretched slave 
colonies of Great Britain, 

" Out of the whole, 330,000, though /Jre, are in most cases 
only part'ially so ; and are exposed to an exceedingly malignant 
and destructive persecution, merely because they have a skin 
differently coloured from the remaining eleven and a half mil- 
lions of their fellow-subjects. 

" Both these two persecuted classes are rapidly increasing. 
Their increase terrifies the slave party, and fills them with anxi- 
ous musings of danger. 

" The glaring contradiction of <ifrce people being a slave-hold- 
ing people; of eleven or twelve millions of men, calling them- 
selves the most free in the world, keeping upwards of 2,000,000 
of their unoffending fellow-subjects in the most abject and de- 
grach'ng slavery, affects many, and urges them to seek a reme- 
dy. The word of God stands out before others, and bids them 



LIJJKIUAN CONTUOVKRSY. .') 

blush and tremble at the guilt and danger of their country ; 
while the smothered cry of the oppressed and unoffending poor 
rises incessantly to God against her. 

" From this state of things it was that the American Coloniza- 
tion Society arose ; by this state of things it is that the Ameri- 
can Colonization Society subsists. It is agreeable to the slave- 
master, for it calms his fears. It offers a remedy to the man 
who mourns over the dishonour and inconsistency of his coun- 
try ; and to the man who fears God, it conmiends itself by pre- 
tending to do all that it can for the unofl'ending poor." 

Bold averment, and utter irrelevancy to the question, " are 
alike conspicuous in what we have quoted." The author pro- 
ceeds : ' The views of its advocates are frankly expressed in its 
own constitution, as above quoted, and in its own reports. I 
refer to them all, particularly to the three last, 13th, 14th and 
15th, and submit from them the following quotations." 

Before giving the quotations, we beg to premise, that we 
have perused the 13thj 14th and 15th Reports alluded to, and 
we have not found the passages in these reports. On reading 
the matter published with the reports, we have found them 
forming parts of the speeches of members of the Society, which, 
as such, have been printed in the 7-es gesta of their meetings, 
without being imputable to the Society. It became Mr Stuart 
to have candidly stated, that he took his quotations from the 
speeches of individuals over which the Society had no control, 
and not from its reports, by v.'hich alone it should be judged of. 
This was due to his readers, that at least they might have so 
important a distinction before them, and its omission, which 
could not be accidental, is an example of that unfair parti- 
zanism with which we have charged the writer. 

The passages are, 

" 1. 13th Report, page 44: — The present number of this un- 
fortunate, degraded, and anomalous class of inhabitants cannot 
be much short of half a million, and the number is fast in- 
creasing. They are emphatically a mildew upon our fields, a 
scourge to our backs, and a stain upon our escutcheon. To re- 
move them is mercy to ourselves, and justice (!!!) to them." 
15th Report, page 24: — " The race in question were known, 
as a class, to be destitute, depraved, the victims of all forms of 
social misery. The peculiarity of their fate was, that this was 
not their condition by accident or transiently, but inevitably and 
immutably, whilst they remained in their present place, by a 
law as infallible in its operation as any of a physical nature ?" 
In same 15th Report, page 25 : — " What is the free black to 
the slave ? A standing, perpetual excitement to discontent. 
The slave would have then little excitement to discontent, but 



O I.llJKUIAN CONTIIOVERSV. 

for the free black; he would have as little to habits of depre- 
dation, his next strongest tendency, but from the same source of 
deterioration !!! In getting rid, then, of the free blacks, the 
slave will be saved from the chief occasions for suffering, and the 
owner from inflicting severity."" 

"2. lolh Report, page 20: — If none were drained away, 
slaves became inevitably and sjieedily redundant, &c. &c. When 
this stage had been reached, what course or remedy remained ? 
AV^as open butchcrij to be resorted to, as among the Spartans 
with the helots ; or g'cnci-al cmandpation and inco7-p07-ation, as 
in South America; or ahandonmoit of the country hy the mas- 
ters *?" Either of these was a deplorable catastrophe ; could all 
of them be avoided ? and if they could, how ? " There was 
but one way, and it was to 'provide and heep open a drain for 
the excess of incirase, beyond the occasion of profitable employ- 
ment, &c. &c. This drain was already opened."'' The African 
Repos'itonj, vol. 7, page 246, says, " Enough, under favourable 
circumstances, might be removed for a few successive years, if 
younix females were encouraged to go, to keep the whole coloured 
population in cheeli I.T How dreadful thus coolly to rend 
asunder the sexes which were made to be each other's mutual 
strength and solace through earth*'s dangerous pilgrimage ! I 
And in page 232, anticipating within two generations a result of 
forty whites to one black, it declares that all uneasiness would 
then be at an end. 

" 3. In 14th Report, pages 12 and 13: — And the slave- 
holder, so far from having just cause to complain of the Coloni- 
zation Society, has reason to congratulate himself that in tins in- 
stitution a channel is opened up, in which the public feeling and 
public action can flow on, without doing violence to his rights ! 
The closing of this channel might be calamitous to the slave- 
holder beyond his conception ; for the stream of benevolence that 
now flows so innocently in it, might then break out in forms even 
far more disastrous than abolition societies and all their kindred 
and ill-judged measures." 

Report of Pennsylvania Colonization Society for 1830, page 
44. — " The Society proposes to send, not one or two pious 
members of Christianity into a foreign land, but to transport 
aniniaUy, for an indefinite number of years, in one view of its 
scheme, GOOO ; in another, 50,000 missionaries (!!!) of the de- 
scendants of Africa itself, to communicate the benefits of our 

• "111 contcin|ilalin<^ these altcrnativos, liov ran we siirru-iently admire 
the goodness of (lod in liaving provided thai tiie increase of shives shall ne- 
cexxarily lead to emancipation and incorjioration ! and how can ue be suili- 
ciently struck with horror at the deliberate and insolent cruelty of man, in 
devisitiy schemes like this for the perpetuation of slavery ! — J. C." 

This scrap of jiure nonsense is a specimen of ]\rr Cropper. 



K 1 BIC K I A N CON'l KUV KKSY • 



reli^'ion, and of the arts. And this colonij o/'iuh-.sionur'u's,'''' ike. 
That is, .sir 07' pfty-s'hv thuusand of the degraded and anomalous 
wretches who arc said to be a mildexo upon the fields of Ame- 
rica, and a scourge to tlie backs, and a stain upon the escutcheon 
of the white ])eople of the United States, are to be transformed 
annually, by transportation to Africa (xoltii their oxen consent), 
into an ariuy ()f' missionaries^ communicating the benefits of re- 
ligion and the arts !!.' 

Now, suppose the very worst meaning to be given to the 
words of these speakers, as piclied out by Mr Stuart, without 
giving us the benefit of context, we would ask, if it is to be en- 
dured, that a Society professing benevolence, and acting bene- 
volently, shall be condemned because some of its members, in 
speeches at its meetings, discover and avow that the benevolent 
scheme may be made at the same time to answer a selfish inte- 
rest ? The notion is preposterous. But we have read the xohole 
speeches, and arc satisfied that dieir spirit was throughout bene- 
volent both to the free Negroes, and also to the slaves, — slavery 
existing, — and the very reverse of that hard-hearted selfishness, 
which ]\Ir Stuart obviously intends to fasten upon the speakers, 
or ratlier on the Society, by culling and arranging for effect, 
isolated, and as they stand alone, equivocal passages. 

But the utter want in the Author's mind of the power of per- 
ceiving the relation of necessary consequence, is exposed by his 
dravving from any thing he has cpioted of these speeches, con- 
clusions condemnatory of the Colonization Society. It is most 
true that the evils stated in them exist in America ; and existed 
long before colonization was thought of; and equally true that 
that measure will do its own share of good without increasing 
those evils ; if it shall not, as we take it is demonstrable it will, 
materially alleviate, and, it may be, ultimately cure diem. The 
utmost contemplated by the speakei's, is the separation of the 
white and black population of the United States ; and Uiey wel- 
come a means that shall tend to this beneficial end, and more- 
over, improve the Negro's condition, physically and morally. 
Let us look this misrepresented policy of separation more nar- 
rowly in the face, and try it by the principles of a sound 
pliilosophy, which will ever be found in accordance with ge- 
nuine rational religion. 

Even Mr Stuart will grant to us, that the actual existence of 
some millions of blacks in the same community with the whites 
of the United States, is in itself an enormous political and moral 
evil. That the black population is, de facto, an inferior caste, 
which, with many individual exceptions, no doubt, is generally 
degraded, uneducated, and in many instances vicious and de- 
praved ; and if it be a scourge to America, the punishment is 



8 I.IHinUAN COXl KOVKiti^V. 

the natural result of a daring violation by man ot a marked a[)- 
pointment of God, — a just I'etribution for the avarice, rapacity 
and cruelty that for ages outraged nature, by tearing the Afri- 
can from the region and the climate for which his Creator had 
fitted his physical constitution, and mingling him with a race 
with which incorporation was not designed, if a strong natural 
repugnance to it is to be received as proof of the Divine inten- 
tion. 

It is wild fimaticism to call this repugnance unchristian, 
and to denounce a doubt of the power of religion to over- 
come it as infidelity ; — because God made all men of one flesh, 
and Christianity bids us open wide the arms of brotherly love, 
and take all our brethren of mankind to our bosom. It is a 
stupid perversion of this religious precept to maintain, that the 
fulfilment of this d\aty precludes all change of the Negro's 
place of residence, and that the American does not in effect 
hold out to him the arms of brotherly love, by placing him 
in independence, comparative elevation, and abundance, in an- 
other country, instead of degradation and destitution where he 
is, God made all men of one flesh, but he did not design 
them all to live in one country, and, however various and un- 
suitable their aspect and nature, to mix and incorporate. If we 
look at that well marked and vast peninsula called Africa, we 
find that equally marked race the Negro, with slight modifica- 
tions, forming its native population throughout all its regions. 
We find the temperature of his blood, the chemical action of his 
skin, the very texture of his wool-like hair, all fitting him for 
the vertical sun of Africa; an-d if every surviving African of 
the present day who is living in degradation and destitution in 
other lands for which he was never intended, were actually re- 
stored to the peculiar land of his peculiar race, in independence 
and comfort, would even Mr Stuart venture to affirm that Chris- 
tianity had been lost sight of by all who had in any way contri- 
buted to such a consummation ? It matters not to brotherly 
love on which side of the Atlantic the Negro is made enlighten- 
ed, virtuous and happy, if he is actually so far blessed ; but 
it does matter on which side of the ocean you place him, when 
there is only one where he will be as happy and respectable 
as benevolence would wish to see him, and certainly there 
a rightly applied morality and religion would sanction his being 
placed. The incurable evil of the present relation of the whites 
and the blacks in America is, that incorporation is almost mo- 
rally impossible. The whites are too numerous in both the 
sexes, to be driven to intermarriage with the Negroes. Mulat- 
tocs are a West Indian, greatly more than an American pheno- 
menon. The distinction in the United States is white or black. 



LIBlilUAN OONTKOVKllSY". tf 

with Hitle of the intervening shades of colour. The races do 
not and will not incorporate. Try the loudest advocate for the 
" vincibihty" of this prejudice, as it is most unphilosophically 
called, with this touchstone, — " marry the Negresses to your sons, 
and give your daughters to Negroes,'" — and we shall have a dif- 
ferent answer from Nature than we receive from a misplaced reli- 
gious profession. 

If there be the barrier of natural repugnance to the actual 
incorporation of the blacks with the whites, it is equally hopeless 
to preach, as a religious duty, the conquest of prejudice to the 
effect of elevating the Negro to social equality with the white, — 
for this, too, is required by the anticolonizationists. The domi- 
nant relation of" the white to the Negro has not varied during 
more than two centuries of intercourse. It was natural from 
this to infer constitutional inferiority in the Negro race, which, 
as an average character, was not generally elevated by the oc- 
casional appearance of au Ignatius Sancho, or other Negroes of 
superior talents and force of character. Phrenology confirms 
this decision. It demonstrates that brain is the visible title, the 
material charter of the ownership of mind. When it is of large 
volume, both in the intellect and the feelings, there is a moral 
force as inseparable from it as light from the sun, and minds 
manifested by smaller brains yield to it an homage which they 
have no power to withhold. The influence of the man over the 
boy, — of the schoolmaster over a numerous school, is not mus- 
cular but cerebral strength ; for, in the first, he would be out- 
done by the united force of his pupils. The large brain of 
Europe controls the small brain of India by an irresistible moral 
influence, while the total Indian muscle is to the British as three 
thousand to a unit. A native once asked an English gentleman 
how it came to pass that 30,000 Europeans could subject and 
keep in subjection 100,000,000 of natives, when, if each native 
only threw a slipper upon their masters, they never would be 
heard of again ? The moral force of large brain has mastered 
India, and is in the course of meliorating its condition. We 
had occasion, as already said, to compare the Negro with the 
European brain in a former number *, and stated it as a phre- 
nological fact, that the white is not only endowed with a larger 
volume, but with a better organization of brain than the Negro, 
so that the first has not only more power, but that power fitted 
for a superior intellectual and moral direction. Now a fact in 
nature is another word for the Creator's will. When mixed, 
the white and Negro must stand to each other in the relation of 
a superior and inferior race, with all the injurious effects of 
such a relation on both. It is therefore in vain to make an ig. 
• Vol. viii. i>. 87. 



10 LIBKKIAN CONTKOVKllSV. 

norant aj)peal to Christianity, and denounce this fact as a sin in 
those who are sufficiently eniiglitened to of)serve it. Man must 
do his part, before he raises liis voice to lieaven. The Creator 
did not intend the two races to peojjle the same country, where the 
one must rule, and tlie other submit, in their respective degrees 
of* constitutional power. Man produced this anomalous condi- 
tion, and, therefore, his first duty is to do his utmost to remedy 
the mighty mischief he has perpetrated, to remove the tempta- 
tion to the sin of domination over a weaker brother, by resto- 
ring him to the condition for which he was created, instead of 
making vain efforts to do him justice in circumstances where it 
is morally impossible, and where it is, therefore, an inconsistency 
to make it a point of rehgious duty. It is here that we find 
well-meaning, but over-zealous religionists, erring most widely. 
They hold practically, though they do not say so, that nature is 
not of God, and thence they reject all aid from any manifesta- 
tion of God but what they call his Word, which they are in 
constant danger for that very reason, as is done in the question 
before us, to misinterpret and misapply. 

We do not mean to affirm that this distinction is immutable, 
and that in the lapse of ages the African brain may not im- 
prove, as there are grounds for concluding the European has 
done in the most favourable circumstances for such meliora- 
tion ; but it is impossible to conceive worse circumstances than 
those of a despised, neglected, and degraded caste, mingled yet 
imincorporated with a naturally dominant and greatly more nu- 
merous population. 

Independent, therefore, of the indisputable abomination of 
slavery, — the real blot on America's escutcheon, — the existence 
of half a million of Negroes, and, wei'e slavery abolished, of 
above two millions, whom nature destined to people Africa, and 
man has violently transported to ^Vmerica, is, we repeat, an enor- 
mous political and moral evil; and it will be a scourge to the 
American's back, which will goad him and his children, and his 
children's children, long after he has laid down his own. Now, 
before the American citizen resolves to break down a golden 
bridge for a retiring enemy, — to close a path, however narrow, 
by which the African may, if lie wills, return to the country 
and climate of his race, — to reconsign to the desert jungle, and 
its wild beasts, a fertile cultivated spot, inhabited by a civilized, 
religious, and moral conmiunity, ready to receive the African 
with tlie welcome of citizenship, and, for the rags of oppression, 
proscription, and persecution, to put on him the ring anil the robe 
of a higher morality, and give him the elevated consciousness 
of iiulejjcndencc and character, — before the American, we repeat, 
shall resolve to say no to all this, he must demonstrate that 



I-IBERIAN CONTIIOVEHSY. 11 

the Negro race ccm, in a reasonable course of generations, find 
in America, what tiiey have never yet done, any thing that 
deserves the name of a country. Tliis is to us the cjuestion, in 
comparison with which all the other points so much dwelt upon, 
shrink inio insignificance. 

It is, to the high moral view which we take of the question, 
matter of moonshine whether the American slave-owner is re- 
lieved or not of the incitement to insubordination in his slaves, 
which is dreaded from the spectacle of a wi-etched, despised, 
and destitute free-coloured population, existing among them, — 
another of the evils which a speaker thought Liberia would 
cure, and which expectation Mr Stuart calls a set- purpose to 
perpetuate slavery. Accustomed as we are to confide in the 
onward march of the supremacy of the Moral Sentiments and 
Intellect, the key-stone of our Ethics, we expect the annihilation 
of slavery all over America, by the fiat of her legislatures, and 
the acclamations of her people, on far higher compulsion than 
the wretched fear of a redundant coloured population. When 
we really come to the great question of slavery abolition, Libe- 
ria, pe)' 6-e, as it has hitherto operated, will be but a fly on 
the wheel of that mighty revolution. If it operates at all, we 
say it operates towards facilitating abolition, and not perpetuatmg 
slavery. But, alas ! if two thousand settlers is the amount of 
colonization in eleven years, when would the " drain,'''' as it is 
called, begin to be felt, which is to raise the slaves' marketable 
value, — remove the slave-owner's fears, — encourage him to per- 
petuate his tyrannies, — and harden his heart that he will not let 
the oppressed go. Confident that slavery will be abolished in 
the United States, whether the Liberian drain be great or small, 
through causes altogether unconnected with that drain, we 
grudge embarrassing that great question with one which has in- 
dependent benefits in its train ; and we hold the Liberian plan 
to be so excellent in its essence absolutely, that we would hai] 
its enlargement to ten thousand times its present extent. But 
when we coneider the difficulties which retard its enlargement, 
— when we view its present insignificant operation in any way,/ 
the loud denunciation of it by ]Mr Stuart and by his echoes 
seems to us utterly insane. 

One of the speakers whose words are quoted, asks most unne- 
cessarily, and because of the atrocious alternative alluded to, in 
very bad taste, " Was open butchery to be resorted to .'''" A 
child just beginning to read would see that the speaker was as- 
suming that such a course was morally impossible ; yet Mr 
Stuart gives the words the emphasis of italics, as if the speaker 
had recommended that mode of diminishing the free coloured 
population of the United States ! This gross perversion lias 



12 I,ini:RIAN CONTiJOVKUSY. 

been eaoeily seized by the enemies of Liberia, transferred in all 
its deforniity into the Anti-Slavery Reporter, and the Anti- 
Slavery Reeord, and imputed not merely to the speaker, whose 
meaninfT has been purposely reversed, but to the whole Ameri- 
can Colonization Society ! 

The speaker whose words are quoted from pages xii. and 
xiii. * of the Ap])endix of the Fourteenth Report, disclaims 
interference with the slave-owner's rig-ht.s; while he would open 
a channel to his benevolence. Now, what person endowed with 
a fair portion of intellect can fail to see, and, with an average 
conscientiousness, to acknowledge, that the rights here spoken 
of are merely the conventional rights of two centuries' stand- 
ing in America ? And what grown man of practical sense 
will not say, that the Society did right to declare their non-in- 
terference with this question, when they could do all the good 
they contemplated without it Nothing they do will obstruct, 
or even retard, the great measure which is destined to put the 
question of right on its proper moral footmg. Yet their avoid- 
ance of that question is called acknowledgment of the slave- 
holder's right. If this is merely bad logic, we should not be 
disposed to visit it with the same measure of censure, as would 
be its due if it is deliberate perversion. 

The 6000, or 56,000 missionaries, it matters not which num- 
ber, is a mere hyperbole of over-zeal in the friends of the Colo- 
nization scheme. We rather look to the moral and religious 
improvement which the great majority of emigrants are to find 
in Liberia, than to take thither. Nevertheless, we would say, 
educate them as extensively as you can before sending them, 
and by all means send your most intelligent and moral indivi- 
duals first, in order to lay that municipal foundation which will 
render it safe and beneficial to colonize more numerously and 
indiscriminately afterwards. Rut all that emigrate are mission- 
aries lo a certain extent, as they are more or less civilized and 
relio'iously instructed, and fitter for usefulness in the colony than 
the tribes which unite with it in x\frica. 

We iiad written some pages upon Mr Stuart's yet farther 
amplifications of the few ideas which his meagre pamphlet con- 
tains, and on what he calls farther proofs, still consisting of iso- 
lated passages from the speeches of individuals, and from the 
African Rej)ository. We shewed what he calls his evidence to 
be insufficient, and his statements, even if proved, to be irrele- 
vant ; but in consideration of our readers, and as we found that 
we only rejieated the answers we have already made, we have 
not sent them to j)ress. 

" We refer to the passage Iiy the proper Roman numerals of prefatory 
matter, which Mr Stuart does imi. 



I.IUKKIA.N CON 1 Jt()\KHSV. 13 

Mr Stuart tells us that the American black population itself 
is hostile to the colonization scheme. He says, p. 14, that the 
coloured people are " writhing under the colonization process."" 
This is the exaogeration of special-pleading. No one writhes 
under an invitation which he is perfectly free to refuse. Never- 
theless, we have meetings of the free-coloured people, passing 
resolutions, — far above Negro literature, and evidently all the 
work of one pen, — invoking their household gods, and obtesting 
the tremendous and atrocious scheme of tearing- them from their 
native land and the homes of their fathers, &:c. ! We have no 
manner of doubt that these absurd and uncalled for exhibitions 
are got up by the enemies of the colonization plan, and a weak 
invention they are. The reports of the society are full of evi- 
dence of the popularity of the colony with the people of colour, 
and record many instances of their eagerness to emigrate in 
greater^ numbers than the means of the society enable it to 
permit. The testimony of the settlers is daily spreading and 
increasing the attractions of the colony to the black population 
in every part of the United States. 

With Mr Lloyd Garrison we really need not trouble our 
readers. He is a type of Mr Stuart, or Mr Stuart of him, 
the chronology of the pamphlets being of no moment, or the 
question which has saved the other original thinking. Mr Gar- 
rison distorts meanings — fastens the speeches of individuals on 
the society — quotes partially — conceals explanations — exagge- 
rates, clamours, and cants, exactly as Mr Stuart does ; while 
the answer of irrelevancy, were every word they speak true, ap- 
plies equally to both. 

The Anti-Slavery Reporter, No. 102, has not only, as we 
formerly observed, copied the unfairnesses of Stuart and Gar- 
rison, but has made an addition of its own in the very worst 
spirit of these pamphleteers. It observed that a Mr Broad- 
nax had made an absurd and unfeeling speech in the Virginia 
House of Delegates, in proposing a bill for thefordble removal 
of the free Negroes from that State ; and although the bill was 
of course rejected, the Reporter holds out ]VIr Broadnax's insane 
proposal, as serving " to illustrate the spirit of the colonization 
leadey-s .'" The next words in the Reporter, differently applied, 
we adopt, and apply to its conductors themselves : " This is 
really too bad !" 

Mr Stuart thought proper to impugn an account given of 
Liberia in the organ of the Peace Society, called the Herald of 
Peace, and addressed a letter to the editor of that periodical, 
which has brought from him " a Vindication"'"' of the Society and 
their colony, itself sullicient to annihilate Mr Stuart in the con- 
troversy. We allude to that paper for the sake of deriving from 



14 I.IUKRIAN rONTROVKRSV. 

it an important aid to our own vindication. Mr Stuart, in his 
letter to the editor of the Herald of Peace, makes admissions, 
by which, as "the lawyers say, he admits himself out of court : 
He says, " But is there nothing g^od, then, in the Ameri- 
can Colonization Society ? Yes, there is, — \sf, For Africa it 
is good. It interrupts the African slave trade within its own 
limits ; and the least interruption to that nefarious traffic is an 
unspeakable good. 2d, For the few coloured people who pre- 
fer leaving their native country and emigrating to Africa, it is 
unquestionably a great blessing. Sd, To the slaves, whose 
slavery it has been, or may b^, the means of commuting into 
transportation, it is a blessing, just in as far as transportation is 
a lesser evil than slavery ; and this is by no means a trifling 
good. 4th, But its highest praise, and a praise which the 
writer cordially yields to it, is the fact, that it forms a new 
centre ; whence, as from our Sierra Leone, and the Cape of Good 
Hope, civilization and Christianity are radiating through the 
adjoining darkness. In this respect, no praise can ecjual the 
Avorth of these settlements.'" After this declaration in favour of 
all that he had denounced, we should think we ought to hear 
no more of J\Ir Stuart. 

For ample evidence of both the salubrity of the climate for 
Negroes, — though not for Whites, — and its growing prosperity, 
down to September last, we must refer to the Society ''s Reports, 
and other publications on Liberia *. 

It will naturally occur to the reader to ask, How is this settle- 
ment countenanced, which is thus opposed ? In America, the 
scheme has been hailed all over theUnion, by the most eminent and 
patriotic statesmen, by the clergy of all denominations, by men of 
science and men of business ; and the Society, which was formed 
1st January 1817, presents a most encouraging array of their 
names. We read among these the names of Monroe, Madison, 
Marshall, Jefferson, Bisliops White and Meade, La Fayette, 
Caroll of Carollton-f", Buhsrod Washington, Henry Clay, Web- 
ster, jMcrcer, Frelinghuysrn, and many other names of states- 
men, patriots, and ])hilosophers. Auxiliary Societies have been 
formed in almost all the free states, and in several of those where 
slavery is yet unabolished. We have seen a letter from the 
Bishop of Virginia, Bishop INIeade — a name which carries the 
greatest weight all over tlie Union — addressed to Mr Elliott 
Cresson, the zealous agent of the colonization scheme, now en- 
gaged in enlisting Bi'itish sympathies in its favour. We wish 

• There is an interesting account of Liberia, we hear about to he in se- 
cond edition, publislied by A\'augii & Innes, EdinburirJi ; and Whittaker & 
Co. London. 

f Lately deceased at the age of ninety-six, the last survivor of those who 
signed the declaration of indoi)endence in 1776. 



LIBEKIAN CONTROVERSY. 15 

we had space for it, because it takes our own view of the evil of 
the mixture of a white and black popuhition, and welcomes a 
benevolent plan for their separation. In En<>land, the name of 
Wilberforce, who has decidedly approved the plan, is itself a 
tower of strength ; and the venerable Clarkson, too, has lived to 
see and applaud it in the sti'ongest terms. With every friend 
to Africa and the African, he wonders at the opposition, and (we 
have seen his words) imputes it to some dem(m*'s intervention. 

Mr Cresson has been eighteen months in England. He is a 
gentleman of independent fortune, anil, actuated by the purest 
philanthropy, is zealously preaching the cause to the British 
people. He has been on the whole well received ; and wherever 
opposed, it has been in the vc7-ij zcords of Mr Stuart's pamphlet, 
while his opponents had not read any thing on the other side. 
In Edinburgh, his reception has been most flattering. At a 
public meeting to hear his statement, held Sth January 18^3, 
Lord Moncrieff presided, and a number of the most eminent 
men were present, all of them well versed in the subject. Lord 
Moncrieff' delivered a powerful address, in which he lamented 
the opposition to the enlightened plan. The Lord Advocate 
Jeffrey, M. P., concluded an eloquent address, by moving the 
first resolution, and was seconded by the Rev. Dr Grant*. 
" 1. Resolved, That this meeting view with unmixed satisfac- 
tion the establishment of the free and independent settlement of 
Negroes on the West Coast of Africa, called Liberia, under the 
patronage of the American Colonization Society, — because they 
consider it as the most likely means to civilize and christianize 
the natives of Africa, — to diminish, and ultimately annihilate, 
the slave trade, by preventing its supply at its source, — and to 
forward the cause of the abolition of slavery itself, by opening a 
channel in which benevolence may flow safely, in providing for 
the emancipated Negro an asylum and a country, in a region and 
climate for which his physical constitution is peculiarly fitted.'''' 
The second was moved by Mr Simpson, advocate, in the unavoid- 
able absence of the Solicitor-General Cockburn, who had zealous- 
ly undertaken it, and seconded by Mr Wardlaw Ramsay : " 2. 
That this meeting are disposed to welcome a plan, which, with a 
due regard to the free-will, rights, and feelings of both the black 
and white population, tends to commence the cure of the evil of 
slavery itself, by re-establishing the African in possession of 
every social and political right in the land of his ancestors." 

" Men of all shades of politics were present and concurring. A committee 
of correspondence was named, a collection made, and subscription papers 
lodged at all the banks, &c. Mr Simpson. Advocate, undertook to act as Se- 
cretary ; and Mr Cresson has since signified, that the funds, if sufficient, 
should be allotted to the establishment of an additional settlement at the 
mouth of one of the five rivers between Monrovia, the Liberian capital, and 
Sierra L,eone, to which the name of Edina should be given. The rivers are 
the oniv slaving stations. ^_ 

' 919 zee 110 





1(5 MBKItlAN CONTROVKUSy. 

And the third was moved by Mr J. A. Murray, M. P., and se- 
conded by Mr Farquhar Gordon : " 3. That this meeting 
higiily approve of the principles and motives of the American 
Colonization Society, and applaud tlie judicious course which 
they have followed, in doing all the direct good in their power, 
while they carefully avoid in any way interfering with other 
existing institutions; and, in particular, in leaving Anti-Slavery 
and Negro Education Societies, and the American Legislatures 
themselves, to pursue their proper course in the great work of 
justice to the injured sons of Africa." The motives of the Ame- 
rican Societies — although held by all the speakers to be unex- 
ceptionable — were considered quite secondary to the actual me- 
rits of the plan, as standing out prominently in the real colo- 
ny, with its free trade, its schools, and its churches, and even its 
newspaper. The sheet of a number, in quarto size, was, with 
great effect, held up to the meeting ; and another, " grown big- 
ger," as a Negro printer's boy said, " as it grew older," in folio. 

AViih the sentiments of that meeting we cordially join. We 
heartily approve the American Colonization Society, on the one 
hand, in their motives, their principles, and their acts, and would 
cheer them on in their tvvofold behest of delivering Africa and 
America from the presentdiseased and unnatural condition of both, 
by a plan which tends to put asunder two races of men which 
God did not join, and whose junction He does not bless, and to 
establish each, free and erect, the lords of their own continent ; 
while, on the other hand, and independently of all the possible 
mixture of motives with which it mav be encouraged and sup- 
ported, we hail the existence of Liberia, — a community of Afri- 
cans, without a white to claim the white"'s ascendancy, to snatch 
from his coloured biethren the prizes of life, and blight the fresh- 
ness of his freedom by the chill of ancient associations and recollec- 
tions, — a connnunity whose basis is peace, or if war — and it has 
had its wars, in which it has borne itself nobly — defensive war 
alone; — whose principle of commerce is a port witl.out a cus- 
tom-house, open to the whole world,- — whose education is uni- 
versal, — whose practical code is Christianity. 

I^ast of all, we welcome Mr Cresson to oiu* country, and are 
glad of the encouraging reception which he has received. Such 
missions do incalculable good, both to the parent country, and 
her gigantic offspring in the New World. He comes in all the 
power of benevolence, before which unsocial feelings fly like the 
shades of night before the dawn. May his visit tend to enlarge 
better relations between the two lands than those of jealousies, 
and taunts, and calunmies, and wars; and may Liberia itself be 
a new bond of union between them, in the veiy spirit of that in- 
fant community, — liberty, light, religion, free commerce, bro- 
therly love, and peace. 



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